Intel announces energy-efficient quad-core processors that consume 50-watts of power

Intel today released two new energy-efficient quad-core Xeon processors for multi-processor servers. The new Intel Xeon L5320 and L5310 operate at 1.86 GHz and 1.60 GHz respectively. Energy-efficient Xeon models consume 50-watts of power, which translates to 12.5-watts of power per core. Intel’s regular quad-core Xeon 5300-series consume 120-watts of power.

Energy-efficient Intel Xeon L5320 and L5310 processors are nearly identical to their higher-clocked counter parts. The energy-efficient models have 8MB of total L2 cache, 4MB of shared L2 per pair of cores, as with other Xeon 5300-series models. Front-side bus of the Xeon L5320 and L5310 are clocked at 1066 MHz, similar to the normal Xeon E5320 and E5310.

Pricing for the energy-efficient Intel Xeon L5320 and L5310 is $519 and $455 in quantities of 1,000, respectively. Intel Xeon L5320 and L5310 processors are drop-in compatible with Intel’s Bensley server platform.

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Has there been anything coded to actually take advantage of multi-core technology? I am thinking games mostly. I haven't seen anything yet. I run a dual core opteron and have yet to see anything to make my purchase worth it, let alone 4 cores.

Well as far as multi-core support and overall performance as a whole it depends which OS you are using and more importantly what programs you use. IMHO quad-core is overkill for home desktop pc's, especially if running XP. The overall performance in XP with a quad-core just isn't efficient enough nor does it scale well enough to justify it's price premium vs. just a dual-core processor. An e6600 and qx6700 will OC to the same levels and other than a handful of quad-core optimized apps they will perform identical and you won't notice the difference.....you will however notice the $500+ you saved.

The main performance increase for home users with multiple cores is obviously in multitasking. The difference between multitasking on a single and dual setup is very noticeable. However, between a dual and quad the difference is pretty negligible....even when testing scenarios you would never encounter in real world use. Which just further illustrates XP's inability to efficiently use a quad. Now I won't tell anyone not to get a quad or that it is somehow a bad processor. Quad's are theoretically better for sure and potentially better for the future. If quad-core support gets big you get a nice boost which would be unavailable with the dual. If they cost close to the same price or if XP could get the most out of them or if they had better app support that would certainly be what I'd buy. Unfortunately that's not the case, with XP.

If you plan on not using XP, supposedly Vista, 2003 server, XP Pro x64, and Linux (and other alternative OS's) all have much better quad+ core support. From what I've seen that is most likely true (I still would question x64's support though) but I cannot personally vouch for their performance either way. However I will say this even if these OS's do work better with quads it still won't matter unless the programs you use fully support quads otherwise it's the same old story as in XP.

Now as far as gaming goes that is probably the last place you should look for improvements with a dual or quad and it is the last place you will find any improvements. Quad cores and dual cores offer pretty much identical gaming performance clock for clock. Either are fine for games but they really can't offer any improvements due to having multiple cores. Just to put it simply, if you max out all the possible quality settings both in game and in the driver control panel, max out the resolution, and max out AA and AF your video card (even an 8800gtx) will be the bottleneck in your system, PERIOD. To get to a point where the cpu is a limiting factor in your system and any multicore optimizations would have any effect you have to lower those settings to a point that doesn't max out the potential of your video card. So dual/quad core improvements (at max settings) for gaming....don't hold your breath on that one unfortunately. And anyone that wants to argue that please note again I am talking about when you are running MAXIMUM POSSIBLE VIDEO SETTINGS.

i agree that "An e6600 and qx6700 will OC to the same levels and other than a handful of quad-core optimized apps they will perform identical and you won't notice the difference.....you will however notice the $500+ you saved."

and yeah for 3d gaming GPU is always the most important component period.

as for servers.. well yeah servers are design to take advantage as many cores as possible

if only the Win XP , Vista, does the multithreading for the software on a lower level

Well thanks, I actually wrote something a little bit longer (though I thought it was too long and trimmed it) talking about quad core performance in servers being very good even if they decided to serve off xp pro. It certainly couldn't match some specialized server software, linux, or even 2003 server it was no slouch. I've even seen dual quads serving off an xp pro box and get perfectly scaled performance along each added core. My point was quads are more a specialized task cpu (by that I mean you get it for a specific purpose, most likely in a professional/business/design/server environment) and unless you are running a certain program designed for a quad setup in that specific type of environment you won't notice a difference. And 99% of your home users will never use those programs.

The major problem with XP is the thread handler not allocating properly or efficiently. It's performance when you using dual core improves immensely (not perfect though and eventually reaches it's limits). One would expect that doubling to a quad core would have similar effects but it's improvements are very small. Now this is multitasking performance with XP allocating the cpu cycles for each thread. When you run a single program properly designed for quad you will get the performance you should. So like I said you can't assume anything other than XP on it's own isn't an adequate platform for quads, especially your standard home desktop user who thinks it may improve multitasking or.....gaming.

And if someone goes out and buys an $800-900+ quad for gaming they need to do some research or discover the meaning of priorities. For the same price or less you could get an e6600 and 8800gtx, or 2 8800gtx's for sli, or one of Dell's 24" HD lcds with either card or cpu etc etc. Several ways to better spend that money for an increased gaming experience that a quad won't give you.